Train Leaves Here This Morning

A lyric from the Eagles' song "Train Leaves Here This Morning," goes like this:
I looked right at the facts there, but I may as well have/
Been completely blind/
So, if you see me walking all alone/
Don't look back, I'm just on my way back home/
There's a train leaves here this morning, and/
I don't know, what I might be on...

Disclaimers:
1. I really like the Eagles.  A lot.  Their harmony, but especially their lyrics. I think I have been to 6 or 7 of their concerts, as well as three of Don Henley's and one of Glenn Frey's concerts.
2. I grew up in a home situated just about 50-70 yards from two sets of train tracks: one for the South Shore line that ran from South Bend to Chicago; the other for the New York Central Railroad.
3. As a young boy and a teenager, I  looked down and walked down and played on train tracks way more often than I should have.
4. I really did fantasize about jumping on a train and riding to some wild and exotic place hundreds of miles west of where I grew up in Norther Indiana.

There is something...I'm not sure just what, but there is something...about looking down a long straight stretch of train tracks.  Something that gets the imagination working...something that makes adventure seem like the thing to be about...something that seems a bit foreboding, but mostly seems compelling.

If I hop that train that leaves here this morning, where will I be when its time to bed down for the night?

How far away from the life I live now can that next train take me? 

If indeed those two rails meet somewhere down that long stretch of tracks, what will I meet when I get to that place?

The train that leaves here on the morning of July 1st, 2015 is called Retirement.
I will be on board.
The ride may be long...or it may be short.

The place that train will take me is somewhere I have never been before...but some place I have imagined, and rather poorly planned for all my adult life.

Just like the train ride of life I have been on since 1945, the next leg of the trip is one-way only.

The Eagles had it right:
I looked right at the facts there, but I may as well have/
Been completely blind/
So, if you see me walking all alone/
Don't look back, I'm just on my way back home/
There's a train leaves here this morning, and/
I don't know, what I might be on...

Retirement.  Damn! 
I knew that train was coming for me...coming straight down the tracks full-speed...and its only gonna slow down enough for me to hop on and then its full-speed ahead once more.

And the truth is: Once that Retirement Train has you on board, its no use running down the corridor in the opposite way the engine is running.

There is something...I'm not sure just what, but there is something...about looking down a long straight stretch of train tracks.